Commenting on assassinated Lebanese President Bashir Gemayel (killed by
operatives from the Syrian National-Social Party on September 14, 1982) Dr Walid
Phares said "it is against all logic and norms of international and national
laws that the assassins of President Bashir Gemayel are still at large inside
Lebanon and in Syria as well." Phares, who knew Gemayel personally from the
early 1970s, said "while the Lebanese justice system knows very well who
committed this terror act, which organization was behind it, and which regime
was involved in it, no Lebanese Government since 1982 has proceeded to arrest
the perpetrators and asked the court system to begin the trial."

Phares, who remembers Bashir Gemayel as a teacher in a high school in the early
1970s, later met him during the process that led to the issuing of UNSCR 436 in
October 1978 calling on the Syrians to cease the shelling of civilian areas and
withdraw from many zones in Lebanon. "Bashir Gemayel wanted to see Lebanon
becoming again a free, pluralistic and democratic country. He was committed to
fight Terrorism and had been resisting the Syrian occupation and the terrorist
organizations long time before Western democracies realized the dimension of the
threat after 2001. Even before the Lebanese war, He was warning politicians that
a crisis was to occur if the Lebanese Army wasn't empowered by the Government to
seize the control of all terror camps in the country. Unfortunately for Lebanon,
that crisis exploded and lasted 15 years. He was killed by the Terrorists for
the same reasons Gebran Tueni, Pierre Gemayel, Rafiq Hariri, Walid Eido, Samir
Qassir, George Hawi, Kamal Jumblat, Rene Mouawad, Mufti Hassan Khaled and Riad
Taha were assassinated: maintaining Lebanon under Syrian (and Iranian) control."

"Had Bashir survived the crime," continued Phares, he would have asked the UN to
issue resolutions similar to UNSCR 1559 to call on Syria to withdraw, on the
militias to disarm, and even on the Iranian Pasdaran to leave the country. He
would have worked on national reconciliation, decentralization and on Peace.
Lebanon would have already rejoined the international community as a prosperous
country by the end of the 1980s. And had Bashir been alive these days he would
have certainly been with the Cedars Revolution and March 14. There is no doubt
about that. He would have been with an ally to the free world in the War on
Terror. Every politician has issues and he can be criticized for many matters,
but Bashir Gemayel sacrificed his life for the freedom of his people. A freedom
still to be regained."